


the valedictorians

by bittybelle



Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series), Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Drunken Kissing, F/M, Paperwork, TEEN EMOTIONS, the looming future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 06:56:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6646792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittybelle/pseuds/bittybelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robin and Bumblebee get tipsy, do paperwork, and contemplate the looming future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the valedictorians

“I don’t.”

“Shut up. Oh my god. Shut _up_.”

“But I _don’t._ ”

“Listen—listen, I get that you can’t admit this to other people, but like. It’s just the two of us here, y’know? Like—this is a _safe space_ , dude.”

“I—” Robin wrinkled his nose. God forgive her, he wrinkled his nose like a rabbit, or a two-year-old confronted with food that did not come in the shape of a dinosaur. He shook his head muzzily, then paused, then with an emphasis he probably thought would convince her of his sobriety. “I’m not lying. I hate it. I hate budgeting the most, actually.”

Bumblebee snickered, not unlike the proverbial two-year-old’s swottish, tightly-pigtailed friend. “It’s just like—you talk about it _all the time,_ okay? ‘Bee, did you make up your quarterly budget yet?’ ‘Bee, did you check out my new budget?’ ‘Bee, I’m sending over my new plan for our obstacle course budget, let me know every little teeny tiny thought that crosses your mind because I just love budgets SO DAMN MUCH.’”

Robin dragged a hand through his hair—wilted, at this point, into a serrated swipe across his forehead. His gloves lay forgotten on the coffee table, garter snakes hiding within a forest of top-shelf liquor bottles. Bee wasn’t surprised by the calluses, but she hadn’t expected the raggedly nibbled nails.

“It’s just. It’s just.” He sighed, his shoulders slumping with the theatricality of the inebriated. The couch was enough to hold them both, but the alcohol was loosening them, like marionettes on worn-out strings. If they sprawled or slumped any further, someone would have to cede ground. “It’s _important_.”

“I know it,” she said, filling a glass with yet more Bombay Sapphire. “But hey? So is this. Come on.”

“We have to get this report _done_ ,” he moaned, his mask caricaturing his expression into the new international symbol for Totally Lame. “I just agreed, because—because—”

“Because I’m right, and this sucks, and it’s the worst part of our jobs, and we might as well take the edge off a tiny bit because we’re getting it in a _week_ ahead of schedule.”

He heaved a leaderly sigh, but Bee could tell she’d won. Because she was _right_ , of course. She was nearly as much of a perfectionist as Robin was, nearly as uptight and fretful and poisonously critical of every blessed breath she took, but: _nearly_. And if they had to compile the Annual Field Report for the League, as they had to every year—every footnote, every burglary, every goddamn time Control goddamn Freak threatened to tie a goddamn voice actress to the train tracks because of some goddamn cancelled web series or whatever the hell—then that _nearly_ was going to make it a few shot glasses worth of more fun. Or less stressful. Or just plain goddamn drunker.

_Whatever_ , she thought, knocking back the gin. She could tell he was having fun, when he forgot to hide it.

He shuffled the dozen-or-so pages that made up the section on arson, squinted, then groaned. “Why did I shuffle these?”

She shrugged. “Because you need another drink.”

His mouth twisted in a Schultzian scribble of disapproval as she shoved the bottle towards him. “I don’t think anyone _needs_ a drink. Ever.” He paused. “Probably.”

She fixed him with her most feline grin. His face was pinkish—like an orchid, she thought. The delicate, Keefe-looking bits near the stem. “You look like a flower,” she mumbled, the syllables tripping over her giggles.

He frowned, and it was such a parody of a frown, such a serious little boy’s frown that she giggle became a guffaw. “What.”

“A flower!”

“A—flower.”

“Uh-huh.” And god, he just—he swayed a little, his body defying the screwed-up buzzkillitude of his face. His shirt had ridden up, the yellow latches loosened, a pale strip of skin exposed, like a knocked-out window blind. She felt something rise in her throat.

He swigged a little—daintily, almost—from the bottle. “I don’t think that’s right.”

“I know it.”

“You— _you_ are. You’re the flower.”

“Oh?” She let her head fall against the couch cushions. They smelled faintly of Speedy’s hair gel—so, like overcompensation to the tune of _Badass Manly Cedar and Saffron Extreme, Brah_.  “What kind of flower am I?”

He contemplated her openly, with a seriousness of gaze no alcohol could dilute. He was taller, she realized suddenly, than when they’d met. Taller and broader of shoulder and just—less of a boy, really. But then, she was a less of a girl.

“A sunflower,” he intoned. _Intoned_. For real. Like he was coming down the mountain, tablet in hand: _Bumbleee is a sunflower_.

She blinked. “A sunflower.”

He nodded, paused, squinted, nodded again. “Yeah.”

“Is it like…” she got unsteadily to her feet and twirled, as though before a mirror. “Wait. I can’t see myself. Duh. But like. Is it like…the yellow thing? Oh my god. The yellow on brown thing? That’s so _boring._ ”

“No!”

“This is like…” she collapsed onto the couch in a great clumsy _whumpf_. “This is serious, man. It’s psychological, okay? I need to know my flower based on my _personality.”_

“That’s—that’s what I mean! Sunflowers are big and bold and—and they just _are_. They are—what they are, you know?” His hands wheeled clumsily before him. “They know exactly what they are. Sunflowers.”

She giggled. They’d shifted, and she’d _whumpfed,_ and he’d swayed, and their thighs were very nearly touching. “Well, you make me think of an orchid.”

He scoffed. “I’m—not an orchid.”

“Yes you are! You’re all, like—you’re so. Orchidish. Fussy and pretty.”

They looked at each other, and they looked away and she felt her stomach contract. All that liquor making her stupid, her ruling self—confident, snappish—shrieking from across a foggy glade: _DON’T MAKE IT WEIRD, BEE._

He gave a hiccup of laughter, and so did she, and she rattled a sheaf of printouts they’d probably end up tossing because the League didn’t actually need inventory of every roll of paper towels they’d used over the past fiscal year. And it wasn’t so bad. He bent over a spreadsheet, and she tossed out a joke about Aqualad and his chum requirements like a strip of bacon before a nervous dog. And he laughed.

And then, and then—he was looking at her—and the look was thick, somehow, thick with booze but also something—something else, something sloppily daytime TV and he said, “Bee?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to join the League?”

She stared at him, because—because Robin was not guileless, Robin was not open, but this question—was. “Like—now?”

“Not—not necessarily. Just.” He ground his palms into his eyes, gave himself a little shake, as if his drunkenness were a cloak he could let puddle around his feet. “In general.”

“I…don’t know, really?”

“Not at all?”

“Well…”She let herself droop fully, the way she only ever did before bed—and even then, only after her teeth were brushed, her laptop shut down, her hair swept into the silk scarf Raven had gotten her for her birthday. “I mean…eventually?”

She thought she might have seen the shadow of a baleful blink behind his mask. “Eventually is now.”

“Not exactly.”

Eventually is soon, then.”

“I…” a long, deep sigh unfurled from some well of sobriety within her. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t.” He paused, staring hard into the middle distance. “Ever.”

“Why?”

“I don’t...I’m done with that. I really like…not being…”

“The junior?”

“Yeah.”

“I get it.” She nodded hard, like, _yes, I really do, even without the whole Batman thing._  “Yeah.”

 “I just…” His shirt rode up further, and maybe she should have said something. “I’m really—I feel good, leading. I don’t have to lead a team forever, but I can’t not be—“

“Singular.” The word sprang from her, Athena-like, sturdy with truth. “Even within a team. Just, like—just you.”

“Yeah. Exactly. I don’t want—I made this team. With my friends. They’re my…” he jerked a hand almost violently through his hair. “My _friends_ , you know?”

She knew it like she knew every stain on the couch, like every type of sigh Aqualad had in his repertoire (which was huge), like every word of English she’d taught Mas and Menos, and every word of Spanish they’d taught her. “I know.” She licked her lips. “We built this shit. We did it.”

“We did.” He looked at her, fully, and there was wholeness to the look, a weight to it and yet also a weight lifted from it. “We _did._ ”

“You and me, right?” She smiled a small, thin smile, something curdling in her stomach, in the glare of anticipation, that shiver of _waitforit_ in the air suddenly as thick as the summers in Georgia she’d left so far behind her—

There was a sudden clumsy rush of movement, shoulders bumping, and her teeth clicked against his, but the kiss was warm and wet and astringent with alcohol. Her hands flew immediately to his hair, dug into the product-heavy tangle of it because she was forward, she’d always been a forward girl, and the smallest little moan swam into her mouth from his. Urgency flooded her, primal and scared because—because this couldn’t last but it had to, _it had to_ , but they were already breaking apart—

“Oh,” he said, softly.

“That’s it,” she whispered, the words falling from her lips, ungainly, slurred. “That’s—god—that’s the orchid. That’s why you’re the orchid.”

He rested his forehead against hers. “I don’t want to be the orchid.”

“I don’t make the rules.”

His lips landed heavily on her cheek, then the corner of her lips, and he grunted, angry with himself, and she—well she laughed because he was—

“I don’t think you’re ready for the League anyway, okay. You have to pass a—a kissing test.”

“I could pass it.”

“Prove it.”

“That is—” He pressed a very serious hand to his forehead. “Okay. Stop moving.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay. But anyway. That is a stupid way to get me to kiss you.”

She grinned, sloppily, because who cared, because they were nineteen and surrounded by forms 6987C through 5229 F-2, drunk on Speedy’s tryhard cache of tryhard booze and they were scared and brilliant and hurtling towards nothing certain save budget revisions forever and ever amen.

“I don’t have to get you to kiss me.” She grinned. And grinned and grinned, hard, because he was pink as a flower in the bouquets they’d never give each other.

“Huh?”

“I can do it myself.”

He very nearly laughed before she put his mouth to better use.


End file.
